Biathlon Penalty Loop Is Like the Dunce Cap of the Olympics

For every missed target in shooting, biathletes must ski around a 150-meter penalty loop.

Doug Mills / The New York Times

By SAM DOLNICK

February 16, 2014

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — For many Olympians, there is no place more wretched these days than a 150-meter patch of snow, ringed with bright red cones, that sits in the corner of the biathlon stadium.

It is called the penalty loop, and it is where cold nations’ hopes turn to slush and Olympic ambitions go to die. Move along, it’s bad luck to stare.

The penalty loop is a devilish quirk of the biathlon, the competition that marries cross-country skiing with sharpshooting and is popular across Scandinavia.

The penalty loop could be a rule dreamed up by some strict mountain disciplinarian: For every missed target on the shooting range, the biathlete must go straight to the penalty area and ski a 150-meter loop. Until the biathlete completes the loops, the poor, circling soul is forced to watch the sharper-shooting competitors who hit all their targets zoom toward the finish line.

As with a child’s timeout, no one is allowed to talk inside the penalty loop. (Talking or coaching of any sort is barred once competition begins.) It would be as if Derek Jeter had to run sprints after every strikeout, or LeBron James had to do 50 push-ups for every missed free throw.

The penalty loop is the dunce cap of the Winter Olympics.

“It’s the corner of shame,” said Tim Burke, a United States biathlete who has endured his share of penalty loops, including two in an Olympic competition, in which he finished 22nd. “It’s right there in the stadium for everyone to watch. It’s painful.

He missed four of his first five shots, which meant that as the rest of the field glided out of the shooting range, he had to stay behind in the loop.

As the sun slipped behind Psekhako Ridge and the temperature dropped below freezing, Lobo Escolar looped again. And again. And again. He finished 84th of 87.

For many, the biathlon rules have an existential bent to them. Wolfgang Pichler, a German who coaches the Russian team, called the penalty loop “a place of horror.”

Indeed, if Dante had been Norwegian, the Inferno’s ninth circle of hell could well have been a penalty loop.

“Psychologically it’s quite hard,” said Mihkel Joosing, a coach with the Estonian team. “You’re in a loop and others are going forward. Sometimes you fall apart.”

The loops are done in front of the stands (ideal for maximum shaming) and take about 20 seconds. That is an eternity in the biathlon. Sports do not have many purgatories quite like the penalty loop, though hockey’s penalty box is a close parallel.

But hockey players are sent there for flagrant misbehavior like fighting, not for simply missing their shots. And because hockey is a team sport, one player’s penalty tends not to affect the outcome as much as a penalty loop does.

Ask biathletes about the loop, and you will get raised eyebrows and flinty squints, occasionally a rueful chuckle. The penalty loop is an unfortunate fact of life accepted by all, but loved by none.

The penalty loop at the biathlon center in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia.

Chang W. Lee / The New York Times

Klemen Bauer of Slovenia had to do two penalty loops during the Olympic sprint competition. He finished in 26th place. Afterward, he described the loop as if it were a restaurant peddling salmonella soup.

“Nobody would like to visit,” Bauer said. “Once you’re there, you try to get rid of it as soon as possible.”

Antal Zsolt, a Hungarian biathlon coach, declined to explore his relationship with the loop, but he summed up his feelings succinctly. “Bad!” he barked.

The penalty loop does not always spell disaster, though. Ole Einar Bjorndalen, perhaps Norway’s greatest athlete and one of the most successful Winter Olympians in the history of the Games, won a gold medal in the 10-kilometer sprint even though he had to do a penalty loop.

In fact, the penalty loop is an unavoidable part of the sport, even for the greats like Bjorndalen, who is widely considered the Michael Jordan of biathlon.

In more than 390 international races, he has skied more than 80 penalty loops, according to Ole Kristian Stoltenberg, a biathlon commentator for TV2 in Norway.

(To extend the parallel, Jordan once declared in a Nike commercial that he has “missed more than 9,000 shots.” But he did not have to ski in a circle after each one.)

The penalty loop has been the scene of some of biathlon’s most memorable meltdowns, which devotees recall the way Red Sox fans remember Bill Buckner’s fielding misplay in the 1986 World Series.

First among them may be Darya Domracheva’s 2009 performance at the World Cup competition in Germany. A Belarussian star, she was leading the race going into the first round of shooting, but instead of lying down to shoot, as that round required, she shot standing up, earning five penalty loops.

She took her punishment, then, fighting back tears, withdrew from the race, another victim of biathlon’s Bermuda loop.

In Sochi, Domracheva has won two gold medals so far — and skied two penalty loops.

Though every country has its own training regimen, few spend much time practicing the penalty loop. Joosing, the Estonian coach, said it was considered bad luck to ski into the loop outside competitions. “You don’t want to spend too much time thinking about the loop,” he said.

In fact, most teams will do just about anything to avoid practicing the loop. The South Korean team makes members who miss their shots do push-ups instead.

The Swiss coaches make poor shooters clean their teammates’ rifles or sing songs on command. The tunes of Polo Hofer, a 60-something Swiss crooner, are perennial favorites.

“You have to find a solution so it doesn’t destroy you,” said Markus Segessenmann, the Swiss head coach.

Stoltenberg, the Norwegian biathlon commentator, used to race internationally, though he never made it to the Olympic level.

Still, he remembers the enormous pressure of the shooting range, and the stinging indignity of entering the loop.

“You carry the whole nation, and the team, on your shoulders,” he said. And into the penalty loop.